I have just come back from a weeks climbing and photography trip to Scotland. Highlights were a group ascent of the classic East Face Route on the Old Man of Hoy, staying on Hoy with some lovely people, exploring Hoy and Orkney Mainland, driving down to Torridon and more exploring and another classic climb near the tiny hamlet of Diabaig.

Here’s a shot (courtesy of Ken O’Connor) of me leading the second pitch of the old man of Hoy -

And here’s a shot of the beautiful beach at Skara Brae on Orkney Mainland –

The weather for the trip was unbelievably good – the rest of the UK was being drenched by rain and battered by strong winds, whilst the north of Scotland, which traditionally gets rubbish weather, basked in the sunshine. Thursday had a cloudy start but as we drove up a steep pass to drop our friends off for a mountain route, we emerged above the clouds to see this cloud inversion with tops of the Cuillin Hills poking through into the sunshine -

And finally Ken and I did the very wonderful Diabaig Pillar,, with views like this -

I have had many climbing trips but this is definitely one of the most memorable, both for the routes and the experiences of wonderful scenery. Thanks to Jim, Liam and Ken, and to John and Steph for their hospitality!

Always nice  to get stuff in print….had two images used this month, this was used in the BMC “Summit” magazine as a double page spread background for an article on a BMC Annual meeting at Malham -

And this image won “photo of the month” in the May Issue of Climber Magazine.

Well since I last posted the weather in the UK has been challenging, lots of grey sky and occasional rain, with odd spells of fine weather. Then the last week of September has been glorious. Quite a lot of time has been taken up getting photos for the new BMC Cheshire Sandstone guidebook, and I think these are now largely complete. Publication is due in the spring.

I’ve also been seizing whatever spells of fine weather present themselves and getting some landscape work done, some for the National Trust and some for myself.And doing bits of climbing and walking, trying to keep fit. And fitted in a quick trip to East Anglia

Must update the galleries when I get a minute!

Spent a satisfying day yesterday at Hoghton Quarry near Preston. Access for climbing has been very problematic in the past, but is now improving. Due to the problematic access, the routes have become very overgrown and dirty; volunteers have now been putting in huge amounts of effort cleaning them. My main task was getting photos of climbers on the cleaned routes to publicise the good work done.

As part of the cleaning activities, we identified a large loose block at the top of the route “Mandarin”, which we decided had to be removed. This is the point at which the block pivoted out into space…

Large dangerous block removed from the route "Mandarin" at Hoghton Quarry.

Why my own website? A lot of my climbing and hillwalking images has been on UKC (UK Climbers forum) since around 2004, but I was building up larger and larger volumes of non-climbing related work, which I didn’t have anywhere to display on line.

Also, with no longer working full time, I’m starting to do some commissioned work, so it’s useful to have an online gallery of my own I can point prospective clients at. I briefly tried using Flickr, but didn’t really get on with that. So here we are…

Why do I enjoy photography? The world can be an amazingly beautiful place, and I enjoy the challenge of trying to be in the right place at the right time to capture at least some of it.

I’m well aware I have a lot of learning to do, so feedback and constructive input is welcome.

Thanks for visiting

Paul